Short-story collections usually benefit from strong editorial directive, so the twin themes of sex and crime given to the authors of this collection seems rather general – what else is noir fiction made of? Interesting, then, that so many of them have interpreted their brief as something more akin to gothic, with serial killers and paedophiles replacing vampires and werewolves in a modern landscape of dread. Lawrence Block's "Scenarios", while taking a pop at how familiar such figures have become in crime fiction, also reminds the reader of the actual horror of a Henry Lee Lucas or Richard Ramirez before they got pulped into an entertainment genre. Other writers evoke the nightshades of the 19th century: Jonathan Lethem with his urbane charmer in "The Salon"; Lynn Freed with her feral children and their monstrous colonial master in "Sunshine" – although the latter has a modern sense of outrage. Patrick McCabe's "Toytown Assorted", a fable of a bored Irish housewife and a Cuban serial killer, would make a wicked John Waters movie.